The Outsider

King Is Zing

After a few crime thrillers and sci-fi, Stephen King returns to what he used to do best—horror. His latest, The Outsider starts out being a straightforward police procedural, with witness interviews reproduced as is; then it takes a sharp turn into the supernatural, brings back the appealing OCD-stricken, movie buff Holly Gibney from his Bill Hodges Trilogy, and the fan cannot ask for more.

The close knit community of Flint City is shocked out of its wits when the badly mutilated body of a little boy is found in the park. All fingers and forensic evidence point towards popular teacher and baseball coach, Terry Maitland.  So enraged are the cops at the severity of the crime, that they arrest Terry in the middle of a game, in front of the entire stadium of spectators, including the man’s wife Marcy and two young daughters. The men responsible for this hasty arrest are the District Attorney Bill Samuels and Detective Ralph Anderson.

Terry Maitland has a cast iron alibi—he was in another town with a bunch of fellow teachers and attended a talk by thriller writer Harlan Coben (a nice hat-tip from one master to another). The cops are completely baffled and worried, because if Terry is proved innocent, their jobs are on the line, plus they face the certainty of a lawsuit from the Maitland family.

Samuels (with his comical cowlick) has no pangs of conscience, but Anderson, a good-hearted family man (his relationship with his wife Jeannie is his strength), is gutted by the possibility of having wronged Terry.  Marcy gets her husband’s lawyer friend Howard Gold to come to her help; he hires investigator Alec Pelley to work on the case, and he calls Holly Gibney.

Holly now runs the detective agency, Finders Keepers, started by her mentor Bill Hodges, who is dead of cancer and she misses him acutely. It is Holly who starts to pull at the thread that unravels the scientific certainty that a man cannot be at two places at the same time; Holly knows better because she had encountered pure evil in the mass murderer known as the Mercedes Killer (from the Bill HodgesTrilogy). She gives the unknown but satanic killer the name—The Outsider. Her encyclopedic movie knowledge leads her to the solution out of Mexican folklore, seconded by cop, Yunel Sablo, who comes from Mexico.

This sets Anderson and his team on a chase to prevent the killer from picking another innocent victim and striking again. 

King builds up horror and suspense in layers, and there’s a tense, heart-stopping action sequence towards the end. Holly Gibney is a marvelous creation, but King’s female characters like Marcy, Jeannie and the redoubtable old dame Lovie Ann Bolton (who helps with the case to protect her son), are all strong, wise and immensely likeable. Pick up this book and be prepared to stay up till the last page is turned.

The Outsider

By Stephen King

Publisher: Scribner 

Pages: 576